


When I Dream in the Gloaming of You

by largoindminor



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/largoindminor/pseuds/largoindminor
Summary: The Doctor and Clara share a kiss.





	When I Dream in the Gloaming of You

**Author's Note:**

> _I love you yet, and I cannot forget,_   
>  _When I dream in the gloaming of you._

_What are we?_  The thought comes unbidden, then lingers, hovers unspoken in his mind. **  
**

Clara’s seated next to him on the stone steps of what used to be called Westminster Palace (now the First Reformed Assembly of London, or some such thing). Well, she’s seated next to and a step higher than him, so that her head’s at just the right height to rest on his shoulder. It’s the day of the coronation of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Fourth of England- or was it the Sixth, he always did confuse the two- and his  _credentials_  had secured them both a prime seat here on the steps to watch the grand fireworks display in her honor. Clara had slipped her arm through his at the start of the spectacle, scooted in tight and tucked both of her hands under his for warmth.

The fireworks are impressive, especially considering the city had declined the use of gravity dampeners so commonly used in the late twenty-fourth century, which allowed for grander explosions. The lights were choreographed with music. Dozens of bubble machines stationed along the banks of the Thames threw bubbles into the sky to refract and reflect the flashes of color. If he looked at her now, The Doctor knows just how the gold would shimmer across Clara’s face; how the deep purples would paint around her eyes and the hollows of her cheeks; how the brilliant pink would be reflected by her softly parted lips. He doesn’t look.

 _Friends,_ his mind so helpfully supplies.  _You’re friends_. He turns the word over in his mind, examines it with a detached sort of interest. Academic. Clinical. He knows it won’t fit, he’ll discard it for being too small. It’s too ordinary a word to describe the one hundred and fifty or so petaseconds  of feeling behind it.

“It’s beautiful,” she sighs and presses her body closer. She tips her head back, not towards the sky but towards him. Her nose, chilly at the tip, slides up along his neck and and nuzzles behind his ear.

“Yes, it is.” he tries to say, though nothing much comes out other than puffs of breath in the cool air. Her own breath is warm on the cold, slightly damp skin of his neck, and she presses a kiss into the loose skin just below his jaw. Then another, slow and soft and over and over again.

 _It’s him_ , he thinks,  _the young one._   _Always handsome and silly and charming, how many hearts did he win, I forget? Maybe she can still smell him there._

She blinks and her eyelashes tickle the shell of his ear. “It’s  _you_ ,” she says, bright and chipper, like she can read his mind. Of course she can.

He turns to look at her, finally, nudging her forehead with his chin so she’ll lift her face and he can see her properly. There they are, the colors flashing across her skin like dancing makeup; beautiful, rich, deep, sparkling colors, but so pale in comparison to such a canvas.

“What are we,” he says, this time out loud, though barely. He notes, perhaps bitterly, that it sounds more like a plea than a question. Unintentional but honest.

Clara smiles. He hates when she does that. Despises it. It’s too much. Too cheeky and too dimply and too bright. And her eyes, her eyes are always the worst. How do they crinkle -just so- at the corners like that, but still manage to look so wide?

It’s witchcraft, maybe.

She kisses the down turned corners of his mouth first, a hand placed on either cheek to guide him, as always, where she wants him to go. Then she kisses him full on the lips. She kisses softly and unhurriedly, mouth closed in the softest pucker, just as she had kissed along his jaw. Her fingers busy themselves in the too long hair that curls behind his ears and for a long while The Doctor doesn’t move.

 _Kiss her back, old man!_  comes the chiding from inside his mind.  _Right. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?_

Inside her mouth tastes of strawberries and lavender milk and the air around his childhood home after a storm.  _How is it that you taste like a place you’ve never been,_ he thinks.  _How is it that I can have this?_

His hands settle just above her hips, holding but not gripping, and not wandering. She makes little sighing noises in the back of her throat, hums contended “ _mmm_ ”s like she does after she’s taken a bite of a particularly good chocolate. They’re noises he files away in the parts of his memory that don’t fade from one millennia to the next. From one life to the next. It’s all too precious, too tender, not to keep. It aches to imagine letting go.

Their kisses slow gradually, to light lazy nips, playful bumps of noses, and eventually Clara turns back to face the fireworks, her head again on his shoulder. He kisses her still; on her forehead just above her eye, then higher along the hairline.

“What are we?” she repeats his words back to him, her tone that of a primary school teacher asking a question to which she already knows the answer.

“Forever,” he answers.

When he wakes up he can still feel her, sweet and fresh and creamy on his tongue. The dream fades faster than he can reconstruct it, dissolves like tissue paper in the rain, impossible to salvage. All that remains is the taste of home, and a hint of sparkling brown eyes, and a word:  _Remember._

He wishes he could.


End file.
